Convergence

Question: What are the biggest opportunities and threats for international investors in 2024?

Dariusz Czoch: Let's look at the opportunities first. The first one I want to mention is valuation. When you look at the European equities that are trading at 13 times forward earnings, whereas U.S. equities are trading at 19 times forward earnings. When you consider these levels, you know that European equities are priced for significant pessimism, whereas U.S. equities are priced for perfection. We believe that over time, these valuation levels will converge. Another opportunity is China. I have never seen in my career such a pessimism regarding China. Everybody seems to be giving up on it, both on Chinese economy and Chinese equities. And even though this recovery has been painfully slow, we started to see green shoots. And maybe, just maybe, China will surprise us on a positive way when nobody is watching. And the last opportunity for international investors is U.S. dollar. It has been very strong, but it looks like a lot of tailwinds are turning into headwinds now. So we know the rates have peaked. We know that U.S. economy is going through the soft patch. All these should be negative for U.S. dollar. Declining U.S. dollar is positive for international markets, especially emerging markets and commodities. So let's look at the threats now. One for sure is geopolitics. That should not surprise anybody. Another one is elections. We have a big election cycle next year. I think about half of the global population will be voting for their new leaders. I think there's upwards of 40 countries, and very important countries. It includes United States, so it starts from Washington DC, all the way to Taiwan, Germany, and U.K. These elections will decide how the world will look like over the next four to five years. Another threat is a potential U.S. recession, even though this is not our base case scenario. If U.S. goes into recession, this will send shockwaves through the rest of the world, and could it impact other markets in a big way.